March 2, 2019: At CPAC, Trump Unloads the Junk Drawer of His Mind

 

3/2/19: President Trump shows up Saturday at the CPAC convention and unloads the junk drawer of his mind. 

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A litany of idiocy

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For two hours, two minutes, seventeen seconds, he rambles across the right-wing landscape, getting lost in the woods, getting tangled in briars, falling into fast-moving streams, climbing out dripping wet, and tripping over every stone of veracity in his path. The Gettysburg Address this speech is not. 

First, he wanders on stage and humps the American flag. From there, it goes downhill. At one point, he admits: 

You know, I don’t know, maybe you know. You know, I’m totally off script, right … You know, I’m totally off script right now. And this is how I got elected, by being off script. True. And if we don’t go off script, our country is in big trouble, folks. ’Cause we have to get it back.

 

The president hits all the old notes from Beethoven’s Liar’s Symphony No. 9. Hillary colluded with Russians, not him! The Mueller probe is a “hoax” and a “witch hunt.” Democrats “don’t care about crime.” They want MS-13 gang members to rape and kill. Climate change isn’t real and socialists – basically Democrats – want to take away cows, cars, and planes. It’s a litany of idiocy, but the crowd cheers every syllable. 

At one point, Trump is feeling sorry for himself. Why, oh, why, did he ever appoint Jeff Sessions! 

The attorney general recuses himself and I don’t fire him. No obstruction. That’s the other thing – if you use your rights, if you use your power, if you use Article Two, it is called obstruction. But only for Trump, for nobody else,

 

Unfortunately, you put the wrong people in a couple of positions, and they leave people for a long time that should not be there, and all of a sudden they’re trying to take you out with bullshit.

 

Trump continues: 

Robert Mueller put 13 of the angriest Democrats in the history of our country on the commission. How do you do that? These are angry, angry people. You take a look at them. One of them was involved with the Hillary Clinton foundation, running it. Another one has perhaps the worst reputation of any human being I’ve ever seen. All killers.

 

(Okay, that sounds nuts.)

 

Trump isn’t done trashing the people he chose to fill his cabinet back when he was promising to surround himself with “the best people.” Another target of contempt is former Secretary of Defense James Mattis. 

I said, “We’re going to give you a new nickname because ‘Chaos’ is not a good nickname.” So we changed his name. We called him “Mad Dog.” But it wasn’t working too well. Mad Dog wasn’t working too well. So what happened is, I flew to Iraq. I wanted to meet the people on-site because I learn more sometimes from soldiers what’s going on than I do from generals. I do, I hate to say it. And I tell it to the generals all the time. But I didn’t have to go there. I didn’t have to go there. 

 

But, hey, look at me, Trump wants everyone to think. I did go. I’m a hero. Forget about that time I had those bad feet. 

 

Chain migration and the First Lady’s family. 

As for the president, he’s on to the next topic. He’s listing his greatest hits. He’s talking immigration: 

We need workers to come in. But they need to come in legally, and they’ve got to come in through merit, merit, merit. They’ve got to come in through merit, they have to be people who can help us, they have to be people who can love our country, not hate our country. We have people in Congress right now, we have people in Congress that hate our country. And you know that. And we can name every one of them if they want. They hate our country. Sad. It’s very sad. When I see some of the things being made, the statements being made, it’s very, very sad. And find out: How did they do in their country? Just ask ’em. How did they do? Did they do well? Were they succeeding? Just ask that question. Someone would say, “Oh, that’s terrible that he brings that up,” but that’s okay, I don’t mind, I’ll bring it up. How did they do in their country? Not so good. Not so good.

 

“These people are sick,” Trump adds, describing Democrats, liberals and critics in a way meant to stir visceral hate. 

Again, the crowd goes wild. No one stops to wonder: How did the parents of the First Lady manage to enter this country? What merits did they bring? 

And what about all those undocumented workers who are surfacing, working at Trump golf clubs? 

No one in that CPAC throng stops to wonder. They cheer. 

Trump spends a significant chunk of his two hours plus howling about the Green New Deal. He doesn’t have any plan to address the threat of climate change, mainly because he doesn’t understand science.

 

His base isn’t any smarter when it comes to the subject. So, he’s going to scare the hell out of them by portraying a call for America’s leaders to address the danger into a plot to pull up capitalism by the roots and stamp out the American Dream. 

Apparently, if you broach the matter of climate change it means none of us will ever be able to fly or drive a car or turn on lamps again: 

No planes. No energy. When the wind stops blowing, that is the end of your electric. Let’s hurry up. “Darling, darling, is the wind blowing today? I would like to watch television, darling” ... Their plan would remove every gas-powered car from American roads. Oh, that’s not so bad. They want you to have one car instead of two. And it should be electric. Okay. So tell people, no more cars, no more cars ... It would end air travel. But you’ll get on a train, don’t worry about it. You just have to cross off about 95 percent of the world. And it would force the destruction or renovation of virtually every existing structure in the United States. New York City would have to rip down buildings and rebuild ’em again. I don’t think so. This is the craziest plan. And yet I see senators that are there for 20 years, white hair. See, I don’t have white hair. I don’t have white hair. I see these white hairs, longtime senators, standing behind this young woman [he means: Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez], and she’s ranting and raving like a lunatic [emphasis added], and these senators: “Yes, I agree with this. Yes I agree.”

 

Like most of the fear the right likes to stir up – death panels for granny – Obama is coming for all the guns – transgender people are lurking in the next bathroom stall – this is rank manure. 

And the crowd shouts with glee. 

 

Has there ever been a president quite as great? 

Mercifully, Trump runs out of steam. He closes by bragging about his success on the world stage. Has there ever been a president quite as great as him? 

And just in finishing up, as you know, I just returned from Vietnam, where I had very productive meetings with Chairman Kim Jong Un. We get along. We’ve developed a good relationship, very good, and made great historic progress…One administration gave billions of dollars to him and got nothing. We haven’t given him anything yet. I look forward to maybe doing something at some point. But I know one thing, I am going to get other countries to give. Maybe not us, but I’m going to get other countries to give, if it all works out, if it all works out. But I had to walk, because every once in a while, you have to walk. Because the deal wasn’t a deal that was acceptable to me. I don’t like these deals that politicians make. They make a deal just for the sake of doing it. I don’t want to do that. I want to make a deal that either works, or let’s not make it. But the one thing we have done is we have no testing, no missiles going up, no rockets going up. No nuclear testing…We got our great people back. We got our great, great people. And that includes our beautiful, beautiful Otto. Otto Warmbier, whose parents I’ve gotten to know, who’s incredible. And I am in such a horrible position because, in one way, I have to negotiate. In the other way, I love Mr. and Mrs. Warmbier, and I love Otto. It is a very, very delicate balance. He was a special young man, and to see what happened was so bad, was so bad…And a lot of what I do with respect to North Korea, and any success that we hopefully have, and we’ve had a lot, we’re given no credit.

 

Yes, yes, it’s very sad. No one gives Trump any credit. 

So, let me see if I understand Trump Logic. If a country doesn’t test nuclear weapons (but has them), or fire missiles that can reach the USA (even if they proved they can), then that’s Trump magic?